What happened at your school? What did you see, and feel? Me: I’m thinking of the English teacher who kicked a friend of mine for some misdemeanour or other. And the R.E. teacher (R.E!) who hammered a kid’s head against the wall. And the belt of course – sometimes my hands, sometimes other people’s. School in the 1970s, and before, was violence: in the playground, in the classroom, everywhere. Morrissey said belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools, but he could have meant any city and any school, in the days of the belt and the cane and the foot and the fist. Good riddance to it.

Ah, but hang on: what have we also lost that was good? The violence may be vivid still, but I’m remembering other stuff too. Primaries one and two: small, friendly classes, and my teacher: the heroic, piano-playing Mrs Reid. And the headmistress Mrs McCombie patiently doing one-to-one reading with me (and telling me off for stomping on the flowerbeds). And the rules and procedure and strictness that was sometimes scary but reminded you where you were and what was wanted: assembly, hymns, uniform, streaming, left-side-up-the-stairs, right-side-down-the-stairs, streaming by ability (me: top for English, bottom for maths), and the words that ran through it all even though we couldn’t always see them: consequences and reward.

The reason I’ve been thinking about all this stuff is because I was at Paisley Grammar the other day looking round the old school – designed by Thomas Graham Abercrombie in the Scots Renaissance style – before the whole thing is turned into flats. The new school that’s replacing it – designed by Ryder Architecture very much not in the Scots Renaissance style – opened this week and I hear the pupils who headed into the new building on Thursday were loving it, which is great.

Before the big move happened, I looked round the old building a couple of times with some former pupils, of all backgrounds and ages, and I suppose I was expecting them to rail against its closure,........

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